Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World

by Marijam Did

Overview

An insider’s account of the videogame industry telling how gaming can become a force for good

Everything To Play For asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the multifaceted stories of the gaming communities and the political actors who organise among them. Crucially, the focus also includes the people who make the games, shedding light on the brutal processes necessary to bring titles to the public.

The videogame industry, now larger than the film and music industries combined, has a proven ability to challenge the status quo. With a rich array of examples, Did argues for a nuanced understanding of gaming’s influence so that this extraordinary power can be harnessed for good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781804293249
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	09/17/2024
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.48(w) x 8.23(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Marijam Did has worked within the videogames industry for many years, currently at AAA studios. In 2019, she was nominated for Games Industry.biz’s 100 Women in Games as well as Campaigner of The Year at MCV UK Awards. She has written about the industry in Guardian, VICE, GamesIndustry.biz, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. She is also currently a Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Previously she has been the Chair Of Communications Committee for Game Workers Unite International - an organisation assisting in unionising the global videogames industry. She also cofounded GWU UK - the first legal trade union that has come out of the movement.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Main Menu

Tutorial: History
Level I: The Theme
Level II: Communities
Level III: Efficacy
Level IV: Modes of Production

Conclusion: Final Boss

Acknowledgements
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/29/2024

Videogame critic Did debuts with a blistering critique of the gaming industry’s ethical and political shortcomings. Charting how gaming became a boys club, she notes that a sales slump in the mid-1980s led companies to focus their marketing on “boys aged eight to sixteen and their fathers,” even as such megahits as Barbie Fashion Designer, which outsold Doom in the 1990s, proved the industry was leaving a lucrative market untapped. As games became increasingly by and for young men, problematic character design and gameplay became the norm, Did contends, lamenting the proliferation of “women in tiny bikinis who can be brutally beaten.” Conditions inside EA, Rockstar Games, and other developers are often as unethical as what they put on screen, marked by notorious “crunch” periods in which employees work 60-to-100-hour weeks without overtime compensation. Arguing that better alternatives are possible, Did details the business model of French gaming studio Motion Twin, where employees share “equal salary and decision making powers.” With nuanced analysis (she asserts that games, contrary to their reputation as the purview of alienated loners, often provide the basis for community, recounting how Doom “inspired conversations and hours of socializing” around amateur modifications of its levels), Did offers a damning portrait of the gaming industry that nonetheless finds reasons for hope. This one’s a winner. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Destroys the gamers who moan about politics ruining their video games. Did shows that games have always been deeply political and asserts the often overlooked radical potential of a medium that means so much to billions of players worldwide.'"
—Paris Marx, host of Tech Won't Save Us podcast

"A breathtaking history of the games industry not just as an economical or cultural force, but as an unacknowledged political power. Backed by clear passion for the medium and a boundless expertise, Did examines how everything can be games, and how games touch everything about our world today."
—Rami Ismail, indie games developer

"Did has achieved a rare, fresh thing. She has enough perspective to give the industry a necessarily critical overview but she's close enough to celebrate the moments that make games worthwhile - and she makes a strong case that there is still much more to fight for."
—Josh Sawyer, Director of 'Fallout: New Vegas'

"Impassioned, fiercely intelligent, proudly left-wing"
—EDGE Magazine

"Videogame critic Did debuts with a blistering critique of the gaming industry's ethical and political shortcomings. With nuanced analysis, Did offers a damning portrait of the gaming industry that nonetheless finds reasons for hope. This one's a winner."
—Publishers Weekly

"An engaging read ... Everything to Play For is a good contribution to the discourse about video games and I hope it proves to be a successful step in the process of getting video games as an industry, and as a subject for criticism, resistance and improvement out of the lefty sin bin and into the mainstream."
—Organise Magazine

"In this well-researched and convincing work, Did presents not a history of video games so much as a look at their political elements and potential ... an obvious choice for gamers, but its large picture approach will intrigue many curious readers."
—Biz Hyzy, Booklist

"After years spent in the field of video games, Marjam Did is here to argue that video games can be used for good. From the early days of Pong to the current world of online gaming, Did believes the role of video games is more than entertainment. Video games can illustrate and bring out the best in humanity."
—Book Riot

"A passionate, supremely well-informed and intensely thoughtful investigation of one of the key areas of contemporary cultural production"
—Jeremy Gilbert, author of Hegemony Now

"A much-needed diagnosis of how videogames need to change for the sake of both players and producers ... Did's book asks, with infectious pragmatism, can this social and economic power be turned towards something more sustainable, equitable and generous than the simple pursuit of profit?"
—Jamie Sutcliffe, ArtReview

"For anyone who takes video games seriously as an artistic medium, Everything to Play For is an eye-opener. It confronts some ugly realities - but only after that confrontation can there be the possibility of positive change."
—Winnipeg Free Press

"Everything to Play For makes for an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to engage in a nuanced, materialist understanding of videogames."
—Socialist Worker

"A cultural critique of the gaming industry’s ethical and political shortcomings come together in this inquiry into the politics of video games and entertainment technologies (both on the screen and in their dehumanizing labour practices), with ideas about how to save the industry from itself."
—The Globe and Mail

"Engagingly idiosyncratic"
—Steven Poole, Guardian Best Books of 2024

"There are lots of criticisms — some valid, some less so — lobbied against video games, but rarely do people see them as a site of hope. In Marijam Did’s book Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World, we explore a new idea: What if video games could help produce a better world? The book is full of insider info on the industry and tales contextualizing exciting and potentially transformative moments in game history."
—AskMen

"For those with even a flicker of interest in video games, this is among the best books on the subject. Everything to Play For takes its subject and the perilous time we live in seriously. It is a wake-up call for those ignorant of the titanic importance gaming has in the modern world. Yet it does not discourage but instead galvanizes. Ignore Did’s words at your peril."
—Luis Aguasvivas, PopMatters

"Everything to Play For is a necessary wake-up call ... [Did's] writing is by turns playful and personal, optimistic and indignant, but never lost in despair."
—Scott Alsworth, Culture Matters

From the Publisher